On the other hand, a corrective to the American pop wisdom is in order. In the United States, when you say you are going to Mexico, you will be hit with all sorts of advice about avoiding imminent death at the hands of the cartel or some such. That struck me from my experience as complete nonsense.
And so I posted and, by a fluke of the internet, my little posting went viral, not so much in the United States but in Mexico! It has so far been viewed 5 million times! Also, Mexican newspapers and websites wrote articles about my post, as if it were a newsworthy story. And with that of course comes much hate and vitriol. It’s hard to ignore even if it is a minority view.
A main criticism is that people like me are ruining the city by pouring in, bringing dollars, buying up good real estate, putting up shops, using it as our playground, and otherwise seeming to replicate certain Colonial habits of the past. And to some people this seems awful.
I’ve read all these critiques and I just cannot see it. It’s true that the place is flooded with U.S. expats, or, if you prefer, immigrants. During the lockdown years, Mexico was one of the few countries in the world that remained open to American tourism that did not bar the unvaccinated.
Mexico was masky but not locked down. Actually, if you go there, you can easily observe how it would be utterly impossible to lock down Mexico City. Thank goodness for that. People have their ways and cannot be shaken from them, no matter how many white-coated professors on TV tell them what to do. So lockdowns were out of the question.
In the United States, however, and to the shock of many people, people complied and became actually quite vicious toward the non-compliant. As a result, many people picked up and left. This went on for a year and then two. As a result, many Americans found that they truly loved the country, the weather, the hospitality, the food, and much else besides.
And it is true: there are whole communities of young professionals who have laptop jobs who prefer to live in Mexico. Adults too. There is a booming industry of retirement communities with happy people enjoying their twilight years in this sunny, happy place. They love traveling around in buses and experiencing new and exciting things.
One might suppose that Mexico would be thrilled! Well, yes and no. There is a minority view there that it is disgusting hypocrisy for Americans to complain so much about Mexican immigration to the United States and then, when the conditions are ripe, pick up their stuff and move to Mexico and expect Mexico to be thrilled about their presence. So, yes, I get why there might be certain resentment about that. Still, surely immigration from the U.S. to Mexico is good for Mexico just as it has been historically good for the U.S. (until border insecurities began to be exploited for political purposes in the U.S.).
The number one complaint I am seeing concerns gentrification.
What an odd word is gentrification! It was apparently coined in the 1970s as a condemnation of how certain sections of a city once dominated by poor people and shabby housing gradually came to be taken over by middle-class people who repair the houses and open up little shops that serve boutique interests.
This supposedly drives out the people who once lived there because property values rise and hipsters and the upwardly mobile move in. Maybe. And it’s axiomatic that all change includes winners and losers. The only question is which predominates over the long term. “Gentrification” surely means a long-run win for any society, simply because normal economic processes are not a zero-sum game.
The word choice is itself unusual. It evolved out of the Latin root Geniti, read through old French and eventually English, the same trajectory that yields gentle, gentile, gentleman, generate, generation, and genetic. The word evokes origin, birth, destiny, determinative lineage, training, and an identifiable class.
The “gentle folk” in the 19th century were the people who were polite and cultivated by virtue of their social aspirations and thereby sought to master language, manners, and morality. You could spot them by their dress and profession. It’s not the aristocracy who are granted their privileges by right. The gentility acquired their ways through training and aspiration.
With gentrification, then, we aren’t really talking about the very rich. We are talking about the aspirationally well-to-do. They are interested in historic areas, see possibilities that others miss, take on development and investment risks that others do not, and work to create a new ethos in a community.
We have seen gentrification in huge areas of the United States and it has always been great for the community provided it takes place via market means rather than through force. Many communities in the U.S. have for decades been gutted from social unrest or deindustrialization or other forces at work that have drained once-thriving areas of capital and residents. The point of reversing this is to see some use for the old buildings and fix them up as a matter of restoring history and re-rooting communities in their past.
Several communities in the United States come to mind, such as downtown and midtown Atlanta, Georgia, and Hudson, New York, two cases about which I know from personal experience. Two decades ago, they were unlivable in many areas but now they have been transformed, and are increasingly so. As for the claim that this somehow harms the residents, I’ve just not seen it and I cannot really follow why someone would claim that poverty is better than growing wealth.
In fact, there is scant evidence that gentrification is a bad thing and vast evidence from experience that growing wealth in a community is a good thing (and I wonder why I should even have to write that sentence).
“Gentrification of this sort is actually exceedingly rare. The socio-economic status of most neighborhoods is strikingly stable over time. When the ethnic compositions of low-income black neighborhoods do change, it’s typically because Latinos and other immigrants move into a neighborhood—and such in-migration is probably more beneficial than harmful. As for displacement—the most objectionable feature of gentrification—there’s actually very little evidence it happens. In fact, so-called gentrifying neighborhoods appear to experience less displacement than non-gentrifying neighborhoods.”
Yes, gentrification is happening in Mexico City. Have a look at Polanco, Reforma, and Condesa, and this is true in many other cities and towns in the country. As Americans lose confidence that things can be fixed anytime soon in this country, as inflation continues to rage and political wars wreck the culture, as the media and tech monopolies continue to spy and censor, people looking for a normal good life are looking elsewhere.
Mexico would be wise to hang a sign up that says: Americans welcome here; please gentrify the whole country.
